The guys on Handle’s blog are calling Scott Alexander a liar; one of them would rather talk to conservatives. At best, conservatives are lying about their beliefs to say things that are just liberal enough to avoid “social consequences” like the government demanding that they be fired. At worst, conservatives are slimy cowards who lose and deserve to lose.

Scott Alexander is not a slimy coward or lying about his beliefs. No, he lies about facts. He is a rationalist: he serves power, which means he serves himself. He is also pretty intelligent.

What this phrase does is depersonalizes (i.e. dehumanizes) the issue of immigration, preventing people from getting emotional about the poor little brown kids whose parents are just looking for a better life. It also replaces the frame of legal vs illegal immigration (nunca persona es ilegal) with inter-community transfer and malicious inter-community transfer. Of course illegal immigration is supposed to mean the same thing as malicious inter-community transfer, but they are only the same when we understand what interests the government has.

It also raises social policy issues in the originating country instead of raising how do we accommodate these refugees issues in the destination country.

Mexico sends its unemployed peasants to the United States – this isn’t their official policy, of course, it’s just what happens. The Mexican president isn’t exactly ignorant of what’s happening; with about a tenth of their population living in the United States, he made his millions on long-distance phone calls, and remittances are a larger part of the Mexican economy than tourism. It’s not an official policy of malicious inter-community transfer for the purpose of resource extraction and to get rid of undesirable citizens. But it doesn’t have to be – it’s malicious inter-community transfer. We have thus discovered what to accuse Mexico of.

Southern communities during the Civil Rights Era would give their Negroes bus tickets to northern cities and instructions to sign up for welfare. It’s still happening with homeless people. The destination cities can’t complain – after all, there’s nothing wrong with Blacks or homeless people, is there? But now they can: this is malicious inter-community transfer.

The Saudis have a problem with angry young men who want to be terrorists. They send these people to other countries, to get rid of them and to affect other people’s wars. It’s malicious inter-community transfer.

Back when Ireland had a potato famine and Kansas was opened up to homesteading with a future plebiscite, Irish bishops offered money and farming implements to entire villages to move to Kansas, in exchange they would vote to make it a free state. Who can complain about White immigration in response to a potato famine; wouldn’t they have voted that way anyway? Malicious inter-community transfer.

Remedies

Alexander doesn’t stop there. No, he goes harder right than anyone I’ve ever seen, other than his commenters. He suggests that both the originating and the destination society might have a claim to permanent special taxes on immigrants. One of his commenters suggests that the destination society might be justified in demanding years of indentured servitude from immigrants as well.

I would suggest that malicious inter-community transfer that looks like this –

– should be dealt with by sending them home and making them the government of their own countries (by force, of course) so they can re-structure their societies in such a way that they wouldn’t want to come to offer themselves as slaves. Since they offer themselves as slaves, that is fitting as a manner in which they serve.

tl;dr

Scott Alexander is cool, NRx is about talking to experts and smart people, and who is better at propaganda than a progressive?